Blood and Snow
by Transhumandream
Summary: The Night's Watch is destroyed and Jon Snow and Val find themselves the leaders of a war band of wildlings. The Others are coming and the two are left with the responsibility of saving as many people as they can, even if that means leaving the North as nothing but destruction, blood, and snow.


**A/N: Hello. This is my attempt to continue the song of Ice and Fire in my own direction. This begins directly after Jon****'****s last narrative chapter in ADwD. If you enjoy, remember to follow, favorite, or if you****'****re feeling especially awesome, review. This is one of my first ventures into fan fiction, so some constructive criticism would be appreciated. Thanks. **

**Rated M just to be safe. There is a whole mess of violence in AsoIaF, one that my story definitely tries to include. Also, the woman pictured on the cover art is Val. Jennifer Lawrence is usually the actress that comes to mind when I picture her.**

**As usual, A song of Ice and Fire belongs to George R.R. Martin or its respective owners. This work was created for enjoyment and not for any monetary benefit. I own nothing but my OC's.**

**See bottom for another author****'****s note.**

**Chapter 1: Val**

Val ducked as the Crow's long sword swung over her head. The missed strike threw the Crow off balance enough for Val to have time to rise and kick him onto his back before she thrust her broadsword deep inside his neck. The blood shot partway up the blade before gurgling back down to its sword. The crow gasped but blood had filled his throat. He died fast. Too fast. He should have hurt before he died. He should have felt the pain that she felt so long ago.

_Val sprinted towards her Papa's body. His chest was caved in and he was gasping for breath. She reached for his hand desperately. He couldn't die. He just couldn't. He was her papa. He was supposed to be the strongest, best man in the world. He was supposed to escape the shield wall like he always did. He was supposed to come home and kiss Mama before telling Val and Dalla about the battle with the black monsters. He would sit each girl on his knees and let them hold his new arm ring while he rocked them to sleep. He was not supposed to die. The black monsters were still there, looting the bodies for gold and good steel. One of them saw her. He saw her holding her Papa's hand and he laughed. The monster had a terrible laugh. Terrible enough to bring her even more tears than she had already been crying. When Val was brave enough to look up, the monsters were gone, but she could still hear their cackling in the distance._

Val ran towards another Crow that was giving one of the boys a difficult time of it. She held her sword to her side with its tip pointed directly at the man's mid-spine. The Crow was pushed back onto the sword as she thrust it into him, lifting him slightly into the air from the momentum. Val held her sword point down and let the body slide off. She looked at the boy, who couldn't have been more than eleven, and was looking at her in awe.

_Val was walking back to her house with water. She was going to use it and the rabbit she had snared earlier to make them a nice warm stew for dinner. A warm meal wasn't something the family had had in a long while. Not since her Papa had been killed. She heard screaming and stopped immediately. She listened and again heard a scream, though this time it sounded much more like her mother. Val dropped the water and sprinted towards her house, moving as fast as her feet could carry her. The_ _screaming only got worse as she reached the homestead. Horses waited outside her house, patiently munching the green grass that separated the stone building from the stream that ran next to it. Val found the door ajar and burst into it to find her mother on the ground, clothing ripped, with the blade of a knife being drawn across her throat. The two crows were still undressed and had several scratch and bite marks across their faces. Apparently, her mother had been more trouble than they thought she was worth. Val stopped in the door and looked at them. The crow not wiping his knife on her mother's skirts tapped his friend on the shoulder. The two of them raised their heads and looked at her. They sat in silence for a moment before the Crow with the knife rose to his feet and pulled his trousers up with him. He started to walk towards Val before the other one placed his hand on his shoulder to stop him. The other Crow whispered something to the one with the knife in a language Val didn't understand. Then he looked at her. "Go away little girl."_

_Val turned and ran from her house. She ran down the length of the brook, desperate to find Dalla. The Crows could have found her. She could be like their mother, clothing ripped and dead on the ground. "Dalla! Dalla! Dalla, where are you?! Dalla?" she choked, her voice marred by sobs._

_"Shush Val," a small girl's voice whispered from her left. "You'll wake the fairies up if you keep yelling." Val flooded with relief as a little girl in a coat and skirt that were too big for her emerged from the trees to her left, clutching a cloth doll to her chest. She looked at Val with a smile that quickly dropped when she saw her big sister in tears. "Val? What's wrong?" Dalla's eyes were wide as Val took her into her arms._

Val looked away from the boy whose eyes were so much like her sister's: their innocence destroyed and only a hollow spot left in its absence. Val ran for the thickest fighting in the middle of the practice yard. Several of the chiefs that just a few hours ago had been in the middle of drinking themselves to death were locked in blows with unarmored and bloody Crows. Val swung her broadsword around her head and embedded it in the shoulder of the Crow closest to her. He yelped in pain and dropped his sword. Val pulled back hard, dislodging her sword from the bone as she brought it around for another strike. The Crow had turned towards her, his bearded face shrouded in alarm as she brought her sword's edge into the side of his neck, nearly decapitating him. Val couldn't see anything but red. She was in the god's protection now. The battle fever took a hold of her and drover her on. The chiefs yelped and hollered beside her, screaming for the Crows to come and meet their fates. Marug swung his great axe around and lodging it into the hipbone of one of the black-cloaked bastards. Shenaigne beat her iron banded war club against the unhelmeted head of one of the queen's men. Dommal shoved his broadsword through the eye of a boy too green to know the difference between the pommel and blade. It was good. Val was drunk on blood and screams. The bastards would never know enough pain.

_Val trailed after the remnants of the war band. Robber's Keep, what the Crows called the Shadow Tower, loomed directly ahead of them. The war band had marched for weeks to reach the place. Its warlord, a stoic man named Bjorn, had been intent on_ _taking the place as quickly as possible. The chiefs of Galloland's southern forest had all sworn oaths to the man. It was the first real attempt to bring the fight to the bastards and their wall since Val's father had died in Eric the Younger's war band ten years ago. The Crows had only come down harder on the Gallowans since then, burning, killing, and raping their way through the mountains and plains since then. Val had wanted to come with them. She had tried to convince Tormund and Ragnar to come with her, but her adopted father and brother had refused. "It's a stupid plan girl," Tormund had growled to her when she brought it up yet again as their patchwork family was sitting around the hearth. Dalla was sewing while Ragnar was trying to fix one of his bent arrows. Tormund fed a few logs into the fire before returning to his ale and glaring daggers at Val. "Bjorn wants to be king, so he'll do something stupid in order to win the men. There is no way he can win. Robber's Keep has never been taken for a reason. He'll have to cross the bridge to get there, and on the off chance that he makes it across, which he won't, he'll have to break down solid oak doors while the crows dump boiling water onto him and whatever glory starved idiots he has left."_

_"I know it'll be hard Tormund, but so what. Most people would rather be dead than be harassed by those bastards for the rest of their lives. At least Bjorn is trying to do something."_

_"Death or freedom? Is that all you can argue girl? No thank you. My old man wasn't good for much, but he did impart one piece of wisdom to me before that bear killed him. Don't start a fight you can't win he said, and look at him. Didn't follow his own advice in the end and ended up dead. I'd rather fight a few Crows till I'm so old my member's fallen off than get killed while there are still giants to kill and bears to fuck."_

_"Oh shut it you old goat," Dalla said from across the room. "You never killed that giant, he died from old age before you could hit him to justify that story, and you certainly never fucked a bear."_

_"First of all small one, I did kill that giant, as I've gleefully imparted to you hundreds of times. So what if he was old? Bastard was still four times my height. And I did fuck that bear. How do you think Ragnar came to be? Need me to explain how everything works?"_

_Ragnar, who had been quiet up until this point, suddenly spoke up. "Oh come of it Da. Ma ain't no bear. She just has one on her shield."_

_"Well boy," Tormund said, stressing the last syllable, "If she introduces herself as a bear, and I repeat that introduction to others, I can't exactly help if others misunderstand me now can I?" he finished with a grin. Just like that, the conversation about the Keep was over. Val tried to bring it up several more times, but Tormund would just deflect it and move on. She wasn't about to listen to the old fraud. She was going with the war band whether he wanted her to or not._

_That was how she found herself in front of the massacre that Tormund has so accurately predicted. The war band had let her fight, though not in the shield wall. Only proven warriors could stand with locked shields. Not that it mattered. They had been slaughtered below the Keep. She had trailed behind them, with the job of picking off Crow stragglers that got stuck behind the bridge when the war band moved forward. She had only seen two, one in a gray cloak with a red slash sewn into the back, who_ _was too far off for her to reach, and a ragged man, with a long beard and an old tattered cloak. He had been trying to get back across the bridge to his bastard comrades when Val jumped him. They had traded blows for a bit before Val had gotten lucky and slammed her shield boss into his face and broke his nose. To his credit, the man didn't scream as he died. He just grunted as Val thrust her sword into his ribs and said no more. He was the first man she killed._

The fighting went on for hours. The Crows had all been long since dead by noon, though it was hard to tell when noon came in the snowstorm that had started to howl. It was mostly Queen's men, Andal soldiers that remained fighting in the castle. It didn't matter. The Gallowans, the Free-folk, were too many and the southern knights in their pointlessly heavy armor were too few. Finally, when the sun went down and the snow stopped blowing, it ended. There were no more enemies to be found in Castle Black. Val knew they were all dead. Those who ran would die of starvation in the woods. Val sat down when the last of the battle fever left her. She was tired. So tired. She could only rest for a moment though. They had to burn the bodies soon or they might get back up. There were so many dead, and the thought of that many wights wasn't at all appealing.

Val was startled when a heavy hand touched her shoulder. Fucking Crows. She was sure they were all dead. She pulled her knife from her belt and started to bring it around, but dropped it when she was met with the gray bearded face of her adopted father. Tormund stared at her, concern etched on his face. "I know your tired girl," he said softly, "but there are bodies to burn. And there's something you should see." What could possibly be so important that she couldn't rest for just a moment? Of course she didn't want to deal with any wights, but they would take all night to come back. She was too tired to argue though, so she simply nodded and rose unsteadily to her feet.

They walked slowly to the base of the King's Tower. Where the hell was Jon? Val was surprised that question hadn't come to her sooner. She hadn't seen him in the fighting, on her side or the Crows. She knew he was planning to leave. He had hinted as much to her after the Thenn's wedding.

_The red witch's lackeys were extinguishing the wide trench of flame she had used to marry the Magnar to that poor girl that claimed to be Jon's kinswoman. Val wasn't sure how a few words and a jump over a fire pit were supposed to save the girl from getting raped and killed, but maybe it was more about the man. The young Magnar of Thenn was a dangerous bastard. He would, and had, killed any man who would challenge him. She wasn't sure if that man would be any better towards the girl than the one they were supposedly saving her from, but Jon seemed to think so, and for the most part, Val trusted him._

_Despite being a Crow, even the head Crow, Jon was a good man. He was somber, and often wore a stoic mask not unlike the one that Bjorn and Mance had worn. She could see past it though. She had seen him north of the Wall. Even in the snow covered hell that Galloland had become, he had been happy, or at least his own version of happy. Val knew that his girl with lucky hair had much to do with that, but there was_ _something else. Jon had seemed more relaxed, freer than when she had first seen him in Mance's tent. He traded stories with Tormund, talked with Mance, traded insults with the Lord of Bones, and loved his woman. Smiles came easier to him then. He hadn't known him well before he came back from south of the Wall, a new black cloak attached to his shoulders, sent on a mission to kill Mance. He never would have, she now knew. He respected Mance too much to actually try to kill him. Mance knew that too. He knew Jon. He had seen him on their march south. He knew he was a Gallowan at heart. Maybe that was why he had trusted him enough to leave him with her and Dalla when the King's men attacked their camp. Val could easily have held the tent entrance, but Dalla's baby had decided that was the moment he wanted to enter the world, and she had to help her sister._

_Jon could've run, but he didn't. He stood guard outside their tent and killed a fair number of men who tried to gain entrance. She hadn't even considered that he had technically stolen her until after the fight, when Dalla was dead and buried, and Val held her sister's son in her arms. Tormund had told her, and she had laughed when she realized that Jon had no idea as to what he had done. He had stood at that door and killed those men because he though it was the right thing to do. Stealing her had been an accident._

_Jon walked up to stand by her side as she observed the Queen's men at work. "Are you alright?" he asked in that caring tone he reserved for his friends when he could shed his Lord Commander face for a moment. They were friends now, or at least something very close to it. She had gotten to know him when the king had been at Castle Black. They got on well and stayed up late talking to each other far to often. The easiness between them had been enough for Jon to ask her to go and find her adopted father. Not that Val needed convincing, but it spoke volumes that the new Lord Commander trusted her enough to come back._

_"Yeah," she answered. "I was just wondering if that actually did any good. Couldn't that uncle of hers just come and kill the Magnar before making off with her again?"_

_Jon kept his gaze locked on the remnants of the now low flames. "I suppose, but he'd be a lot more reluctant to do so now. It's one thing for him to force her to marry him, but to kill her husband in order to make that happen. No. That's too messy. Besides, the Magnar's a hard man to kill."_

_Val smiled as he confirmed her previous thoughts. She waited for him to continue, but he seemed to be struggling to say something to her. She turned and looked at him, trying to find his eyes, which were fixed on the ground. "What is it?"_

_He looked up at her. "I have to go away soon. You remember my sister, Arya?" Val nodded. Jon's little sister was his last living sibling. The last thing Val had heard of her was that a man named Bolton had married her against her will and was raping her. She was still alive, if you wanted to call that living. Jon continued: "I sent Mance and a few others to try and get her out. They did, as far as I know, but Stannis is dead, and my sister is lost somewhere in the Wolfswood. I need to find her."_

_Val was floored. Mance was alive!? She had seen the red witch burn him, right in front of her, while the Andal queen made her sit on a horse and watch. "Mance isn't dead?!"_

_Jon shook his head. "Melisandre placed a glimmer on him and the Lord of Bones. Made both them look like the other. She burned Rattleshirt and saved Mance. Mance said he would get Arya out. He said he could blend in where I would just get killed. Not that he cares. I'm sure that he would kill me if he could, but Melisandre did something else to him. She bound him to her will somehow. We haven't heard from him in a while though. If we don't soon, I'm going to go get him and my sister both."_

_Val was shocked. Mance was alive and running around south of the Wall. The Lord of Bones was dead, though that wasn't really a loss. She had hated him. Still, if any of Jon's comrades heard that he was going to leave, they would kill him. Jon had already betrayed most of what the Crows claimed to stand for. Leaving his post would be the last straw. She said as much and he nodded, that information evidently already weighing heavily on him. "I needed to tell you. It won't be safe for you here, if I leave. The Queen's men and the Watchmen both want to hurt you, and if I'm gone I don't think even Wun-wun standing outside your door will be enough." Val was about to protest but Jon raised his hand to stop her. "I know you can take care of yourself, better than most people here. That's why I wanted to ask you, if that time comes, if you'll come with me. I need to know you'll be safe, and frankly, you're a better fighter than anyone else that would help me. I'd have a better chance if you were there."_

_Val swallowed the questions that were about to explode out of her. Jon didn't need doubt. He had enough of his own. Adding hers to it would just make the situation already worse than it was. She stepped forwards and wrapped her arms around him. He was still the same man that stood in front of the tent, never forgetting about her even as he was lost in his own problems. After a second of her holding him without response, he returned to embrace, holding her tightly to his chest, reluctant to let go. Val pulled back and looked into his eyes before answering: "Yes."_

Tormund brought her to the center of the yard, where she had been fighting back to back with the chiefs earlier. They had seemed reluctant to yield the ground, regardless of the fact that the bodies of half a dozen Crows only occupied it. The bodies lay side-by-side now, their blades and armor missing and their eyes staring unseeing towards the gray sky. A ring of Gallowans surrounded the bodies. Her people stared at them without speaking. Val and Tormund shouldered their way through them and stood at the feet of one of them. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to be looking for. The bodies were blood soaked. All of them had multiple stab wounds. She looked at Tormund, but he just stared at the bodies with a grief-filled look. Val followed his gaze to a pair of unseeing dark gray eyes. No, it couldn't be. Jon was leaving. They were leaving. The chiefs had all sworn oaths to him. They had made him their warlord. They were going to go find his sister and kill that rapist bastard Ramsey. How could he be dead?

Then she looked at his wounds. Three dagger thrusts decorated his torso. There might have been more she couldn't see. She looked at the bodies next to him. They hadn't been stripped of their armor; they had never been wearing any. Their shirts and cloaks were marred by slashes that armor should have deflected. They wore no sword belts, which the Gallowans would have left behind. None of her people wanted to wear a black scabbard. They killed him, just like Val though they would. He had finally broken too many oaths for them. The bastard Crows just couldn't stand for him, for anyone, to be a human being. He had left his post, or at least been planning to, and they fucking killed him for it.

She sank to her knees and continued to stare into his eyes. The gray eyes that were so much like her own, the gray eyes that would never see again.

**A/N: I love Val and really enjoy writing her. There is enough written about her to give us a general idea of who she is without there being too much that I am restricted on how to develop her character. She is often depicted as a background character in fan fiction: someone who is just a placeholder. I thought it would be interesting to elevate her to the level of a main character. **

**The other thing I wanted to address is that when we see the area north of the Wall, it doesn****'****t really make sense. It is always frozen, even when a few feet south of the Wall, it is lush and green. That frozen wasteland is inhospitable to life, and on top of that, climate doesn****'****t change that drastically in just a few feet. The north of the wall, the place I****'****m calling Galloland (Because saying ****"****north of the Wall****" ****all the time sounds ridiculous), has a climate that people can survive in and a history of its own. As to why it becomes the frozen hell that we see in AGoT, well, you****'****ll just have to wait and see.**


End file.
